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Very Short Post On WisCon, Elizabeth Moon, And How None Of This Is Satisfactory

I am at work and on deadline, so I don’t have time to write out everything I want to say. Some of you may have noted my relative quiet on this issue. It’s not on purpose. But again, my reasons belong in a longer post.

As Amal points out in this excellent, heartbreaking post[1], it’s time we stopped giving kudos to people for basic human decency and start asking for more. I know the women who wrote and signed that letter and consider them friends and friendly acquaintances. I like them quite a bit. But I feel no compunction to applaud them for taking the safer road.

I don’t like it. I don’t know what I’m going to do about it. I have far too much to say at this point. But it will have to wait for tonight.

Footnotes

Which, may I say, echoes feelings I’ve had about responses to racism, which is why it made me cry, because I have been there so often, and no one else deserves it.[↩]

Comments

I don’t think there is any combination of words that would suitably address the flaming bag of dogshit that Elizabeth Moon left on WisCon’s front step. I do tend to have faith that the concom is at least as dismayed, angered, and offended as they claim, and that their words will be backed up with deeds over the coming months. I would be shocked if they didn’t provide their GoH with a healthy selection of panels where she could work out her ignorant and harmful viewpoints on Islam.

Let me be clear that I have no stake in WisCon aside from a burning respect for the people who organize it. I’ve never been and I wasn’t planning to go before or after reading Ms. Moon’s essay. I feel rotten for people who have attended who admit that they won’t feel safe with a GoH who is prejudiced against them, and I feel rotten for the people who wouldn’t have felt safe had a powerful and influential woman lost a career-spanning honor because she spoke her mind even in a way that was offensive to the majority of readers. But I think there shouldn’t be a misunderstanding over who caused this rottenness, and it’s no one on the concom.

I'm a speculative fiction writer by night, a media critic and culture columnist by day, and an activist blogger in the interstices. I enjoy science fiction, fantasy, short stories, harshing your squee about that thing you love, and squeeing hard about that thing I love, in that order.